The iPhone is recording everything users see and do on their devices, for caching purposes, an iPhone hacker has said.
The device records screenshots of a user's most recent action so that it can achieve the effect of applications fading away when the home button is clicked, according to Jonathan Zdziarski, who wrote the forthcoming book iPhone Forensics: Recovering Evidence, Personal Data, and Corporate Assets.
The screenshots are presumably deleted after the application is closed, but they can be recovered with forensics techniques just like data deleted from most storage devices can be reconstructed for purposes of law enforcement, Zdziarski said in a webcast on Thursday, in which he demonstrated how to break into password-protected iPhones.
"There's no way to prevent it," Zdziarski said of the screenshot caching, according to a Wired.com report. "I'm kind of divided on it. I hope Apple fixes it because it's a significant privacy leak but, at the same time, it's been useful for investigating criminals."
Breaking into a password-locked phone took Zdziarski nearly an hour to demonstrate and required creating a custom firmware bundle, the report said. The issue is different to a security hole discovered last month that allowed people to get access to email, text and voice messages on password-protected phones.
Apple representatives did not respond to an email seeking comment for this story.
Talkback
This is a disgusting article. It's no where near on point. The iphone first of all does not do this for caching purposes, it does this for the animation that closes the app.
Second, that's not "recording all user actions" which implies either heavy loggin is being done, or multiple screenshots of users interaction with the applications, or a video.
Third, you change it from "user actions" to "last user action" in the article. So you even know what going on.
How is this journalism? How does the biggest tech magazine publisher allow this?
do you honestly just hit the "publish" button because it's got the iphone in it? You make me wanna get rid of mine.
I have 7 users syncing to my exchange server at work with 5 iphone 3g's and 2 originals. I know a few things about them (and their reception here in NY)